Colin Hawkins/Getty Images

Well, what does make a picture? We talk about trends, boomers, the explosion of the Hispanic market in the US, what colors are hot for spring or fall and the list goes on and on…And that’s all great, but isn’t there more to it? What happens when you dig deeper? What happens when you really try to get into the consumer psyche around how they respond to imagery based on what’s happening in their lives? Can we make better pictures as a result?

In 2006, we, the Creative Research team, started a new journey and we called it the MAP Report: what Makes a Picture. We spent 4 months looking at 50,000 photo requests, spoke to 500 customers, and visually analyzed over 2,000 print and TV campaigns from around the globe. We further analyzed customer behavior on our website, search terms, buying patterns, concepts and subjects and visual analysis of our own pictures, etc. Last, but certainly not least, we studied consumer behavior in London, Paris, Munich, NYC, LA, Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing and Sao Paulo. The result was the first MAP report we called One Life (whew).

One Life is about the trends resulting from consumers on overload - a need for grounding, to trust someone who’s real, a need to simplify our lives. It’s a reflection on the influence of women in the work force and a whole lot more.

We hope the report gives insight into our visual language and the way we visually communicate with one another, today and tomorrow, about the things we have in common and the things we don’t. We’re still using it to influence the pictures we’re creating today. These trends don’t disappear like next year’s new black, they tend to evolve and take on new shape. Consequently Guru Joe, Monotasking, the Confessional Consumer and the rest of the gang continue to provide us fertile ground for debate and brainstorming.

Take a look at the excerpts, I would love to hear your thoughts. We’ve got a new MAP launching here in the next month, it’s called AspEn. And that’s all I’m sayin’ - today anyway…

Daniel Day/Getty Images

“Hansel…he’s hot.”

So says Will Ferrell as Mogatoo in Zoolander, one of my favorite movies of all time. I bring it up, a) because it makes me laugh and b)because most industries from fashion, technology, fine art and food to name a few, are all trying to discover what’s hot, who’s in, who’s out and what’s next. It’s no different at Getty Images.

I head up this great team of people called Creative Research. Our job is to figure out “what’s hot” for pictures. We do this by studying how consumer trends and behavior affect the imagery our art directors, photo editors and photographers create.

In the past months I’ve spent a lot of time with the gang in sales and a lot of time with our customers. I wanted to find out the truth. Are we are bringing the right pictures to our customers?

So, we just completed this enormous study, we looked at over 2,000 print and TV campaigns from the US, Japan, England, France, Brazil, China, Australia and Germany. We looked at photo requests from our customers, we talked to customers, we looked at consumer behavior in each of these studies. Here’s an excerpt that you can now see for yourself.

What do you think? Talk to me people.

Photo: Erik Dreyer

As an interesting follow-up to the last post about the copyright issues surrounding the Pop Art show in London, is an article in the NY Times a couple of days ago about appropriated photography in fine art. Included are quotes from photographer Jim Krantz, whose work has been appropriated (with much success - the piece in question sold at auction a few years ago for upwards of $300,000) by the most famous ‘appropriationist’ of them all - Richard Prince. Mr. Krantz’s photography is currently on display at the Guggenheim Museum by way of Mr. Prince’s well-received 30-year retrospective exhibition there currently.

Mr. Prince’s canny insouciance is captured nicely in a quote from 1993, where he off-handedly compares his series of appropriated Marlboro Man imagery to bank robbery: “No one was looking. This was a famous campaign. If you’re going to steal something, you know, you go to the bank.”

Despite what one thinks of the means used, Prince’s selection of the Marlboro Man imagery is appropriate in more ways than one - for years the now legendary Prince has been carefully cultivating his own image as one of a cowboy or outlaw of the art world. What could be ‘cooler’ than a successful bank robber? Images of cowboys (from advertising no less), biker chicks, inane one-liner jokes painted on canvas, seedy pulp fiction book covers reproduced as large paintings, actual hot rod hoods as sculpture - it all glows with the “aren’t I a bad-ass”, James Dean-meets-King Midas aura that surely is the unspoken base appeal at work behind Prince’s success. It operates like a cultural pheromone, luring everyone from the bookish critics, curators and academics who have steeped themselves soggy with arcane theory and hope some of the cool will rub off, to the uber-rich and listless collectors of uber-priced art, for whom the promise of an injection of life-blood from the netherworldly cultures of the American hoi polloi is irresistible, to young art students (who in a former era may have gone to Hollywood), who find reassurance in the Prince story (for themselves and their parents as well, who initially balked at the art school price-tags) , sensing that it augurs well for their own future success - after all, looking cool is what they’ve done so well their whole life.

But these more sordid motives are rarely if ever mentioned, indeed perhaps taboo, though easily discernable beneath the kind of intricately coded veil of mystifying sophistry that seems to have become the sole function of art writing (or perhaps always has been?). To wit (from the Guggenheim’s introduction to the current show): “[Prince's] deceptively simple act in 1977 of rephotographing advertising images and presenting them as his own ushered in an entirely new, critical approach to art-making—one that questioned notions of originality and the privileged status of the unique aesthetic object”.

But I admit to being a bit incendiary here, perhaps betraying the influence of Prince, provocateur par excellence, on myself as well. I do feel Prince to be an important and influential American artist, but also wonder if that importance might not rest at least partially on what he has revealed about the inner workings of the art world in contemporary society (intentionally or unintentionally? yet more fodder for the art sophists) . Whether it’s his influence or not is arguable (certainly not his alone), but when perfect recreations of grunge and gutter-punk get-ups from barely a decade ago sell for thousands of dollars in high-end fashion boutiques, I wonder if we’re any the wiser for it.

We live surrounded by images, under the spell of visual stimuli. Taking a break in that rush is an absolute necessity. In Paris (France), the market research company Gatard & Associes offers a room on its website, e-dito.com, to discover arts, culture, literature, and to share thoughts about advertising and marketing.

This month Jumping in advertising is deciphered. The writer, Christian Gatard takes us in the advertising backstages. Exploration is done through the prism of mythology. Following him opens our minds for a journey to unexplored areas of our culture and for times as far as 30 000 years ago. Gatard gives us tips to consider shamanism in a new way. The next topic that will be deciphered in E-dito.com next issue is the MASK in advertising. Provocative and appealing idea! Wherever you live if you dig up an interesting and recent advertising example relating to the Mask theme, do dare to share it with the E-dito.com guys : redaction [at] e-dito [dot] com. You’ll make them happy. Enjoy! ( Jumping Frog - Courtesy of American Images Inc / Getty Images)

One advertising campaign everyday. This is the basic, minimalist, obvious concept for Adrien de Malherbe’s blog : Mastercom. In fact this is also a great challenges that requires determination, investigation and self-disciplin. Just for us, for our pleasure, information and inspiration. No need to come every day as it’s open 24/7. Take your time, choose your best moment for an entertaining trip in the advertising world. Enjoy!

Andersen Ross /Getty Images

Do you find that images used by creative, marketing or sales teams don’t always support your brand? Do you have efficient systems in place to store and share your imagery and make the most of your investment? Join experts Courtney Adamson of Getty Images, Mukul Krishna of Frost & Sullivan, Trish Sarno of ING, and Manish Mallick, a consultant to General Motors to learn:

- How consumer trends affect visual language

- How to select the right imagery to connect with your customers

- How technology solutions can help you keep your brand on track

- How ING and General Motors used imagery and created image libraries to elevate and manage their brands

Webcast Info

When: September 27, 2007 10 AM (PST)

Where: Click here to register.

Louie Psihoyos, who is a prominent contributor to Getty Images’ image partner Science Faction, is suing Apple for ripping off his photo below for their Apple TV ad campaign.  That Louie’s original photo below probably brings to mind the Apple TV campaign without me even showing any actual campaign photos or clips means that he probably has a good case, but for a better illustration go here.  That Apple had previously been in negotiations for use of the photo but backed out is even more incriminating.

Maybe this shouldn’t be too surprising though, considering Apple has been quite busy building a long sordid history of this type of thing, compiled nicely here by engadget.

Here’s a funny follow-up to this story comparing the packaging from the Atari 2600 Packaging circa 1982 to the Apple TV site.  Oops - curiously the pics are gone from flickr, but you can see them here.

Philip J Brittan

Interesting entry in jet-setting troubadour/intellectual Nick Currie’s (aka Momus) blog about the opening last year of a Japanese division of Pantone, New Jersey-based color coders who’ve become the ubiquitous industry standard in design and printing. Following just on the heels of the Japanese division launch, Pantone also unveiled a new global brand identity.
I just saw the line of Japanese Pantone cellphones last week which I thought was a cool new development in the ever-expanding Pantone Universe, but didn’t think too much of it until stumbling upon Nick’s blog entry, which contains amusingly brainy and acerbic ruminations on Japanese culture, proprietary culture/copyright, and marketing.

Momus (Nick Currie)

Advertisers often tiptoe near or across the fine line of what is acceptable in advertising, but where do we draw the line between tolerable and offensive ideas? Yesterday, an exclusive panel of leading international thinkers and risk takers explored boundaries of advertising during Tasting the Limits. They debated and offered insight into the competitive environment of advertising and why great adverts are expected to not just push the boundaries…but break them.

Moderator: Lewis Blackwell - Group Creative Director, Getty Images

Panel Members:

1. Cami Levin - Creative Director, MTV Networks International

2. Jillian Lochner - Photographer (freelancer for Getty Images)

3. Mark Charkin - VP Advertising, Bebo

4. Patrick Burgoyne - Editor, Creative Review

5. Amir Kassaei - Chief Creative Officer, DDB Germany

ADVexpress interviewed Lewis Blackwell after the panel discussion and Lewis gives more insight to the use of imagery in advertising. Click here to hear what he has to say.

The winning team members from Publicis: Juan Pablo Gaete (art director) on right, Michael Honeyman (copy writer) on left.

Team Chile has won the prestigious Young Creatives Competition for hot creative talent at the 54th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

This year, the Press Lions Jury selected two teams to take second place - Australia and the Philipinnes, with third place awarded to Brazil.

Second place team Australia - Enrique on left, Justin on right - please note we don’t have a photo of team Philipinnes as they were too excited and we missed our opportunity.

Team Brazil showcases their third place win.

Thirty-seven teams, each comprising one art director and a copywriter, under the ages of 28, had just 24 hours to interpret the brief and develop a print ad using Getty Images’ imagery.

The work was judged by a panel of 19 members headed up by Bob Scarpelli, chairman, chief creative officer DDB Worldwide. All of the executions will be shown at the Palais des Festivals.